A gray-haired woman in her sixties. Kindly, well dressed, pleasant looking.
Smiling, with a feeble voice, she asked how she could help him.
Eric stammered, but the woman's gentle gaze encouraged him, and soon he spoke to her with ease, explaining that he knew her husband's work and admired it.
"How good of you to remember," she said.
"I was in the neighborhood. I hoped you wouldn't mind if I stopped by. To tell you how I felt about his novels."
"Wouldn't mind? No, I'm delighted. So few readers take the time to care. Won't you come in?"
The mansion seemed to Eric like a mausoleum – cold and echoing.
"Would you like to see my husband's study? Where he worked?" the aging woman asked.
They went along a chilly marble hall. The old woman opened an ornate door and gestured toward the sacristy, the sanctum.
It was wonderful. A high wide spacious room with priceless paintings on the walls – and bookshelves, thick soft carpeting, big windows that faced the white-capped ocean where three sunset-tinted sailboats scudded in the evening breeze.
But the attraction of the room was in its middle – a large gleaming teakwood desk, and like a chalice on its center, an old Smith-Corona from the fifties.
"This is where my husband wrote his books," the old woman told him proudly. "Every morning – eight until noon. Then we'd have lunch, and we'd go shopping for our dinner, or we'd swim or use the sailboat. In the winter, we took long walks by the water. Winston loved the ocean in the winter. He… I'm babbling. Please, forgive me."
"No, it's quite all right. I understand the way you feel. He used this Smith-Corona?"
"Every day."
"I ask, because I bought a clunky typewriter the other day. It looked so strange it appealed to me. The man who sold it told me your husband used to own it."
"No, I…"
Eric's chest cramped. His heart sank in despair.
"Wait, I remember now," the gray-haired woman said, and Eric held his breath.
"That awful ugly one," she said.
"Yes, that describes it."
"Winston kept it in a closet. I kept telling him to throw it out, but Winston said his friend would never forgive him."
"Friend?" The word stuck like a fishbone in Eric's throat.
"Yes, Stuart Donovan. They often sailed together. One day Winston brought that strange machine home. 'It's antique,' he said. 'A present. Stuart gave it to me.' Well, it looked like junk to me. But friends are friends, and Winston kept it. When he died, though…" The old woman's voice changed pitch, sank deeper, seemed to crack. "Well, anyway, I sold it with some other things I didn't need."
Eric left the car. The sun had set. The dusk loomed thickly around him. He smelled salty sea air in this quaint Long Island coastal village. He stared at the sign above the shop's door: DONOVAN'S TYPEWRITERS – NEW AND USED – REBUILT, RESTORED. His plan had been to find the shop and come back in the morning when it opened. But amazingly a light glowed faintly through the drawn blind of the window. Although a card on the door said CLOSED, a shadow moved behind the shielded window.
Eric knocked. A figure shuffled close. An ancient gentlemen pulled up the blind and squinted out toward Eric.
"Closed," the old man told him faintly through the window.
"No, I have to see you. It's important."
"Closed," the man repeated.
"Winston Davis."
Although the shadow had begun to turn, it stopped. Again pulling the blind, the ancient gentleman peered out.
"Did you say Winston Davis?"
"Please, I have to talk to you about him."
Eric heard the lock snick open. The door swung slowly inward. The old man frowned at him.
"Is your name Stuart Donovan?"
The old man nodded. "Winston? We were friends for many years."
"That's why I have to see you."
"Then come in," the old man told him, puzzled. Short and frail, he leaned on a wooden cane. He wore a double-breasted suit, a thin silk tie. The collar of his shirt was too large for his shrunken neck. He smelled of peppermint.
"I have to show you something," Eric said. Hurrying back from the limousine, he lugged his ugly typewriter toward the shop.
"Why, that's…" The old man's eyes widened in surprise.
"I know. It was your gift to Winston."
"Where…"
"I bought it in a junk shop."
Wearied by his grief, the old man groaned.
"It's broken," Eric said. "I've brought it here for you to fix."
"Then you know about…"
"Its secret. Absolutely. Look, I need it. I'm in trouble if it isn't fixed."
"You sound like Winston." The old man's eyes blurred with memories of long ago. "A few times, when it broke, he came to me in total panic. 'Contracts. Royalties. I'm ruined if you can't repair it,' he'd say to me. I always fixed it, though." The old man chuckled nostalgically.
"And will you do the same for me? I'll pay you anything."
"Oh, no, my rate's the same for everyone. I was about to leave. My wife has supper waiting. But this model was my masterpiece. I'll look at it. For Winston. Bring it over to the counter."
Eric set it down and rubbed his aching arms. "What I don't understand is why you didn't keep this thing. It's worth a fortune."
"I had others."
Eric stiffened with surprise.
"Then too," the old man said, "I've always had sufficient money. Rich folks have too many worries. Winston, for example. Toward the end, he was a nervous wreck, afraid that this typewriter would break beyond repair. It ruined him. I wish I hadn't given it to him. But he was good to me. He always gave me ten percent of everything he earned."
"I'll do the same for you. Please, fix it. Help me."
"I'll see what the problem is."
The old man tinkered, hummed, hawed, and poked. He took off bolts and tested levers.
Eric bit his lips. He chewed his fingernails.
"I know what's wrong," the old man said.
"That brace is cracked."
"Oh, that's a minor problem. I have other braces. I can easily replace it."
Eric sighed with relief. "Then if you wouldn't mind…"
"The keys are stuck because the brace is cracked," the old man said. "Before the keys stuck, though, this model wasn't typing what you wanted. It wasn't composing."
Eric feared he'd throw up. He nodded palely.
"See, the trouble is," the old man said, "this typewriter ran out of words. It used up every word it had inside it."
Eric fought the urge to scream. This can't be happening, he told himself. "Then put more words inside it."
"Don't I wish I could. But once the words are gone, I can't put new ones in. I don't know why that happens, but I've tried repeatedly, and every time I've failed. I have to build a brand new model."
"Do it then. I'll pay you anything."
"I'm sorry, but I can't. I've lost the knack. I made five successful models. The sixth and seventh failed. The eighth was a complete disaster. I stopped trying."
"Try again."
"I can't. You don't know how it weakens me. The effort. Afterward, my brain feels empty. I need every word I've got."
"God dammit, try!"
The old man shook his head. "You have my sympathy."
Beyond the old man, past the counter, in the workshop, Eric saw another model. Knobs and levers, bolts.
"I'll pay a million dollars for that other one."
The old man slowly turned to look. "Oh, that one. No, I'm sorry. That's my own. I built it for my children. Now they're married. They have children of their own, and when they visit, my grandchildren like to play with it."
"I'll double what I offered."
Eric thought about his mansion on the Hudson, his estates in Bimini and Malibu, his yacht, his jet, his European trips, and his Ferrari.
"Hell, I'll triple what I offered."
Six more days, he thought. I've got to finish that new book by then. I'll just have time to do it. If I type every day and night.
"You've got to let me have it."
"I don't need the money. I'm an old man. What does money mean to me? I'm sorry."